This article has been published in partnership with vivo India. 

No one would want a security camera inside a washroom, a hostel corridor at night, or the rooms of a home.

Yet these are often the spaces where people may need help the most.

At 14, Prateek Sethi found himself thinking about this gap: how do you make such places safer without watching people?

His answer came from something already moving through the walls around him: Wi-Fi.

Most people think of WiFi as something that streams videos or loads a webpage. Prateek saw something else in it, a signal that bends and scatters every time a person moves through a room, in ways specific enough to be read. 

If those patterns could be understood, he believed, they could help identify when a movement inside a space looked normal and when it signalled possible danger. That became the base of his project. 

"My project was about identifying criminal patterns using WiFi," he says. "It's everywhere, so I used AI to differentiate between what a normal person would do in a space, and what constitutes a violent or criminal act." No cameras and no recorded footage are required. Just a signal, doing the work no lens ever could.

That idea won him the individual category at the third edition of vivo Ignite, vivo India's Technology and Innovation Initiative, along with a Rs 4 lakh scholarship. 

Now 15 and in Class 10 at a public school in a remote part of Odisha, Prateek is exactly the kind of story the programme's fourth edition is hoping to find again. 

Registrations are open to students in Classes 8 to 12 across India at vivoignite.com, and close on 10 July 2026.

How a 14-YO saw safety in Wi-Fi signals

Prateek's interest in AI and IoT began during the pandemic, when his professor father asked if he'd like to spend his free time exploring technology instead of focusing only on schoolbooks. That early curiosity turned into years of self-driven learning. 

When a spate of crimes against women in India drew national attention, Prateek found a direction for his skills. "That's what sparked the journey of this innovation," he says.

He first learned about vivo Ignite through the programme's website, and separately through a friend who had competed in an earlier edition and gone on to study at an IIT. 

"I thought I should also enroll in this initiative," Prateek recalls. "I........

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